How to Create WordPress Invoices for Online Business

Sending the invoice is a critical practice for the online deal of products and services. With it, you can prove the virtual transaction online and ask your customers to finish the payment step. However, creating the invoices manually using a special template can be a cumbersome task.

In this case, if you have established the online business using WordPress and feel time-consuming to generate the invoices for your customers, you can check the below methods that help you create WordPress invoices within minutes.

Utilize the WP-Invoice Plugin

This is one of the most widely used WordPress invoice plugins that help you generate and send the itemized invoices with full customization. As researched, this plugin is preferred mainly by themes and plugins developers, professional authors and SEO consultants. Besides, as it ties into the WordPress database for user management, you can constantly keep in track of your customers and their information.

Now, you can download and install the plugin from this page or via your WordPress admin. Upon the successful activation, you can follow the below steps for the creation of invoices.

Step 1 – Decide the Basic Settings

Now, you need to navigate to the WP-Invoice section of your dashboard and click the Settings button to finish the first-time setup. Here, you need to enter a long list of information that will be shown in the invoice content.

Firstly, you should decide your business name and invoice page. Here, if you do not have a special webpage to display your invoice, simply create and publish one.

It is possible that you have added some words to your invoice page. If so, you can choose to insert the invoice by overwriting the whole content or by using the [wp-invoice] tag. Or, you can simply place the invoice below or above the textual content.

Next, you need to decide the payment methods. By default, this plugin allows 5 options that include credit card, Stripe, InterKassa, PayPal and 2Checkout. You can activate all of them and decide the default payment channel. Here, do not forget to tick the check-box that allows customers to change the pre-determined payment.

Also, below this basic setting part, you are required to customize your default payment with the required information. For instance, if you choose PayPal, you need to fill out your PayPal username and IPN link.

Step 2 – Finish Some Advanced Settings

After saving the basic configurations, now, you can click the Settings button again to finish some advanced options.

Main Settings – Here, you need to upload your business logo and enter your business address, phone number and the correct email address. Also, if you want to enable the tax calculation, partial payment and recurring billing display, you can configure accordingly.

Business Process – From this part, you can decide the sender name and address of the invoice email, enable the Google Analytics Events Tracking, decide whether to send the confirmation message upon the completion of the payment and many more.

Payment – This part is mainly used for you to decide the default currency.

Email Template – Here, you can decide the content of the emails for New Invoice, Reminder and Send Receipt. Unless you have some special requirements, simply leave them unchanged.

Line Items – Now, you can enter the information of items and services for names, descriptions, quantity, taxes, prices and total charges. To finish this part in advance, you can enjoy the streamline creation for invoice.

Step 3 – Create Your New Invoice

To create the new invoice, you simply need to click the Add New button from the WP-Invoice tab. Here, you are required to enter the email address of your target customer and to click the Create New button.

Now, you can be redirected to the editing page of the invoice. You can edit the title and the content based on your needs. If you do not want to add any word, it is fine. After that, you need to finish a lot of meta information to enrich the content of your invoice.

Firstly, you should enter the information of your target customer, including the first name, last name, phone number, company name, country, state, city, street number and postal number. It is recommended to make them as detailed as possible.

Next, you need to add the information of your product. Here, you can choose from your pre-determined line item or create a new one. If needed, you can also add the discount to make the final charge more precise.

The last part is the payment settings. You can pass this area as your have already decided everything. Now, you can save this page and click the Toggle History Detail button.

After confirming the invoice recipient and choosing the email template of New Invoice, you can click the Send Notification button. Then, your customers will get the invoice email that has the link to your invoice page, from which they can check the details of the invoice and pay the bill.

Utilize the Online Service

In addition to the WordPress plugin, you can also use some online service for invoice creation. Here, we highly recommend you to try the Invoice Generator, which is a free service to help you make and send the invoice quickly.

After entering the generation page, you firstly need to upload your business logo, offer the emails of yours and your customers, and enter the invoice sending date and the due date for payment.

After that, you can add the item information, including the name, quantity, tax rate and the amount paid.

Now, you can send the invoice directly from the service provider. Or, you can download the template and send it manually. Here, do not forget to modify the currency.

I've been an experienced web developer, SEOer and technical writer since 2003. I worked in many international high-tech companies including Microsoft and Autodesk before 2012. Now I own a startup company in San Francisco, CA, focusing on developing websites and blogs to deliver exceptional results to global readers by leveraging the power of Internet.
Find us on Google+

FTC Disclosure

We get commission from web hosting companies for referral and advertisement. However, this does not affect our unbiased web hosting reviews and insights. We never allow payments to influence our judgement. We always work hard and try our best to help people find the best cost effective web hosting deals at an affordable rate.